Cash for hacks

2014-02-03

Helen Martin

Virus Bulletin, UK

Editor: Helen Martin

Abstract

Hackers stand to gain from bug bounties and contests.

Source code hosting website Github has become the latest organization to launch a bug bounty programme, offering between $100 and $5000 for each vulnerability reported. Meanwhile, Facebook has awarded its biggest bounty to date, with $33,500 being paid to a Brazilian researcher who discovered a remote code execution flaw affecting the company’s servers.

Next month, hackers have up to $150,000 to gain in the latest Pwn2Own contest. HP is offering $150,000 to anyone who can gain root access to a Windows 8.1 PC running Microsoft’s Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET), while co-sponsor Google is offering prizes of up to $150,000 for hacks against its Chrome OS. Pwn2Own takes place at the CanSecWest conference in March.

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